Line-Cutters and other Dregs of Society

Life is fraught with waiting in line. Grocery check out lines, traffic, theme park rides, Starbucks.... the only place to avoid a line is if you stay home, and that's only if you have enough bathrooms for every family member.

So while on vacation, we observed a maddening occurrence: people breaking into line for rides. Now I'm not talking about 2 people holding a spot while 1 runs to get them all a soft drink or to change a kid's diaper. I'm talking about a group of at least 30 people methodically and politely cutting in line!

We were in line for a "get you wet" raft ride. We noticed a large group of Hispanic people, ranging in age from 50's on down to about 7 or 8. Here's how their scam worked. One or two people would break in front and say "excuse me, my friend is up there" then they'd edge themselves through. Then some other people would cut in a separate spot, point to the first two people and say "excuse me, I need to get up with them" and slide on past. Kids, adults, teens, they were all in on it.

Finally, the lady behind me and I had enough. Some kids approached us and we said "NO." They looked astonished. We said "we know your whole group is skipping in line, and you're not skipping US." Then the girl said something like "we're just trying to exit and need to get up there" and the lady told her "you exit at the back, you're NOT getting in front of us." They looked stunned that anyone would stand up to them. We heard a few claps of approval from other folks in line, and had numerous heads nodding their approval of our actions. Invariably, some sucker let the kids cut and the entire group of 30 wound up in front of everyone. Our hour and 15 minute wait probably would have only been 50 minutes without all that cutting.

I hope they all got really wet and their clothes took a really long time to dry. And I hope their kids and teens don't' grow up to steal, cheat, lie, break laws, and wind up in jail, living on my tax dollar. But that's probably too much to hope for.